Innacurate wind data
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The wind data at my location has been very wrong today- 60.956, 5.131. It's currently gusting 30 knots outside, I know this because I live on a sailboat and have an anemometer. Windy is saying the wind is 6kts with gusts of 9kts.
Using primarily ECMWF, but most of the other models are similarly wrong. UKV is showing more accurate info with gusts of 19kts.
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@Rdevanney
Weather models with a resolution of around ten kilometers or even less are not capable of predicting these strong but certainly very localized winds. I have never sailed in the Norwegian fjords, only off the coast. But as in Scotland, I imagine that one can be surprised at the bottom of the fjords by katabatic winds producing violent squalls. In mountainous areas wind forecast is not easy.
This weather station which is not at sea level reported some gusts but not so huge as you said.
See Reported wind and then Observation vs forecast. -
@idefix37 Hi, thanks for replying. We do get a lot of katabatic winds here. The winds today and yesterday are synoptic-driven and funnelled by the topography, not temperature/density driven. I'd wrongly assumed that topographic funnelling was factored into the models, just because Windy is usually more accurate than this for this location. But I guess it's impossible to predict how much it will decouple from higher altitude wind.
Sailing here is frustrating. One minute, motorsailing with no wind, then suddenly heeled over because of a gap in the mountain!
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@Rdevanney
I understand, it's probably tricky sometimes, I can imagine.
As already mentioned, the model resolution -the data grid- does not allow for a very detailed forecast locally.
But worse, its orography model is even coarser. It only reproduces the terrain relief very roughly and therefore does not "see" the fjords. Therefore it is not able to take into account a funnelling effect in narrow fjords.
But on a larger scale, models like that of ECMWF see this effect perfectly, for example between high islands.
w/wind color scale calibrated according Beaufort scale -
@Rdevanney
The wind data for my area is always inaccurate and so off that it’s terrible. I emailed them several times and they have never responded. I wish I did not pay for the premium service for the year bc their reporting of wind is so wrong for my area -
@terratorn said in Innacurate wind data:
for the year bc their reporting of wind is so wrong for my area
Windy doesn’t report wind. Windy visualises the forecast from major weather models. So Windy cannot change anything about these forecasts.
Have you tested several models to determine which one works best for your area?
Could you say where are you located? It would help to understand why you are getting these wrong forecasts, same as we discussed about wind in Norwegian fjords.
